A bank is under no obligation to a customer having a checking account to pay a check, other than a certified check, which is presented more than six months after its date, but it may charge its customer's account for a payment made thereafter in good faith.
OFFICIAL COMMENTS
- UCC Official Comments © by ALI & the NCCUSL. Reproduced with permission of the PEB for the UCC. All rights reserved.
- This section incorporates a type of statute that had been adopted in 26 jurisdictions before the Code. The time limit is set at six months because banking and commercial practice regards a check outstanding for longer than that period as stale, and a bank will normally not pay such a check without consulting the depositor. It is therefore not required to do so, but is given the option to pay because it may be in a position to know, as in the case of dividend checks, that the drawer wants payment made.
- Certified checks are excluded from the section because thay are the primary obligation of the certifying bank (Sections 3-409 and 3-413) [55-3-409 and 55-3-413 NMSA 1978, respectively]. The obligation runs directly to the holder of the check. The customer's account was presumably charged when the check was certified.
History: 1953 Comp., § 50A-4-404, enacted by Laws 1961, ch. 96, § 4-404; 1992, ch. 114, § 189.
ANNOTATIONS
The 1992 amendment, effective July 1, 1992, substituted "obliged" for "obligated" in the section catchline.
Am. Jur. 2d, A.L.R. and C.J.S. references. — 10 Am. Jur. 2d Banks § 552.
Bank's liability for paying postdated checks, 31 A.L.R.4th 329.
9 C.J.S. Banks and Banking §§ 328 et seq., 337, 341, 351, 357, 358, 405.